Oct 21
Received this via a co-worker today. Hilarious commercial. Baffling message.
So let me see if I’ve got this straight. In order to save myself from obsessing over the mind-numbing amount and variety of trivial minutiae pouring out of my phone, and from all the addictive tendencies and relationship-destroying habits that these pieces of technology cultivate and capitalize upon, I should… get a different phone?!
Um… OK.
Given some of the discussion that has been taking place on an earlier post, I thought I would pass on this link to an interesting article by biologist Frans de Waal in today’s edition of “The Stone” (a philosophy forum from The New York Times). The entire article is worth reading as I think he touches on a number of very important points (including the limits of science), but I was especially drawn to one particular section. Read more
Well, the blogosphere is abuzz this week with the results of a survey on religious knowledge conducted by the Pew Research Center’s Forum on Religion & Public Life—particularly the fact that atheists and agnostics scored highest on the quiz. The sheer volume of words being devoted to these results makes me hesitant contribute still more. Whether it’s Christians desperately explaining the results away or atheists/agnostics pointing to them as yet one more piece of evidence demonstrating their intellectual superiority over their benighted religious brethren, it all gets very tiresome. Read more
Anyone involved in church work in a twenty-first century, Western, post-Christian context is familiar with the common trend toward declining church attendance (see here, for some figures from the American context). The story is a well-rehearsed one: people are interested in “spirituality” not institutional “religion.” Churches are places of lifeless formalism. And if churches don’t do anything for us, why bother with them? Why not spend a Sunday morning enjoying the outdoors or our kids’ sporting activities, or a quiet cafe and a newspaper, or… fill in the blank. Read more
Last week I was driving back from a breakfast meeting and happened to catch a bit of a CBC radio program where the hosts were discussing an apparently growing service dedicated to reminding people of how awesome they are. At Awesomeness Reminders, it’s all about you and your awesomeness and being continually aware of this awesome reality. For the low, low price of only $10/month ($20 outside the USA and Canada—apparently non-North Americans begin with an awesomeness deficit), you can receive a daily phone call carefully crafted to convey just how awesome you are in order to fortify you to face the challenges of the day ahead. Read more
Sep 3
A couple of loosely connected thought, links, and quotes for a Friday morning…
A few weeks ago, I came across an excellent new collaborative blog called Wondering Fair (a number of contributors are alumni from Regent College). Interesting and engaging topics, good writing, nice accessible look and feel… definitely worth adding to your reader. Due to my ongoing interest in how technology shapes us as human beings, I was particularly drawn to David Benson’s post on why he doesn’t own a mobile phone. His summary hits the nail on the head, in my view: Read more
Over the last little while, The Biologos Forum has been posting a conversation between Pete Enns and N.T. Wright dealing with various questions about faith, culture, science, politics, etc. Today’s video has to do with the perception, in parts of the evangelical world, that there is a “slippery slope” in evangelical-dom and that it always goes to the left (i.e., to more “liberal” understandings of faith). The questioner wanted to know if the “slippery slope” argument could also be applied to the right? Read more
I haven’t read the book or seen the movie (and plan on neither), but I’ve heard enough about both to be cynical. And to find this article by the Vancouver Sun‘s Pete McMartin, recounting his trip to see Eat Pray Love, absolutely hilarious in a depressing, if-only-this-wasn’t-so-true sort of way. I just about sprayed coffee all over my computer screen after reading the title alone (“Bleat, Flay, Loathe … One Man’s Search for God on a Cineplex Screen”). Read more
A lot of my reading for this week’s sermon has been focused on Sabbath—how to keep it, why it ought to be kept, what prevents us from keeping it, etc. Whatever else a consistent and deliberate observation of Sabbath might protect us from, I think that our societal addiction/enslavement to technology would be high on the list. A couple of articles I’ve come across over the last few days from the New York Times’s “Your Brain on Computers” series (see here and here, for example) have simply reinforced my sense that one of the things that the inhabitant of twenty-first century postmodernity is most desperately in need of is unplugging. Read more
I just finished reading Caring for Words in a Culture of Lies, Marilyn Chandler McEntyre’s delightful plea for us to renew our commitment to steward the gift of language as the treasure it is. She is not the first to lament the decline of those who truly understand and appreciate the importance of words (a problem compounded in our text-crazy, Facebooked, Twittered world), but her book communicates these points with the grace and beauty you would expect from someone attempting to lure readers back into the simple truth of how words can move us. Read more
On the off-chance that anyone out there is looking for further evidence that our cultural discourse is being seriously degraded and trivialized by the proliferation of technology, an article in yesterday’s New York Times alerted readers to the availability of iPhone apps to help believers and non believers arm themselves for war. There are anti-Darwin apps for Christians, “Bible Thumper” apps for atheists, and others, no doubt, each doing what all apps are designed to do: provide entertainment, “illumination,” and diversion as quickly, and with as little demand to think for oneself, as possible. Read more
Over the last few weeks, my morning routine has involved waking up, tiptoeing down the hallway to avoid waking everyone else up, putting the coffee on, and catching a World Cup match before work. It has been delightful, and I am already dreading the end of South Africa 2010. This morning’s game (a 2-1 win by the Netherlands over mighty Brazil) had it all—colour, drama, suspense, amazing skill, some great goals, a bit of nastiness, and the right result! I can’t wait for the other three quarterfinal matches today and tomorrow. Read more
Last night at our young adults group we talked about, among other things, the frequently encountered view that Christianity is a strange relic of the past, that has nothing useful to say to us in the present, no normative force or existential/moral relevance in a world that has “grown up.” It is a well-rehearsed and often repeated story: once upon a time, primitive people thought there was objective meaning in the cosmos, we now know this to be false, and our only course of action is to salvage what personal meaning we can from the scrap heap of a random and chaotic universe. Read more
A few months ago I was snooping around in a bookstore somewhere and I noticed a book called The Hole in Our Gospel. It had an interesting picture on the cover and a provocative title, so I looked on the back cover. The author was a man named Richard Stearns who, I learned, was the president of World Vision, USA. Read more
Any piece with a title like “Should This Be the Last Generation?” is bound to provoke a bit of curiosity, especially when the famous misanthrope Peter Singer is discovered to be its author. Today, the issue on Singer’s mind is whether or not human beings should consider ceasing to reproduce as an ethical response to our predicament, whether from the perspective of ecological responsibility (i.e., human beings are bad for the planet, therefore less of us are better than more) or based on more existential concerns (every child born will suffer, and we have a duty to prevent suffering). Read more
It seems like every time I walk into a bookstore these days there are a handful of new books on the shelf, confidently explaining how science has shown this or that religious understanding of the world to be unfounded, misguided, false, naive, etc. The obvious response to such claims—and one that is frequently made—is to question just how it is that science could “prove” or disprove anything about an overall worldview within which science is located. Read more
Sometimes I (somewhat hypocritically) lament the limitations of the blogging world, the kind of discourse it does/does not promote, the nastiness and/or triviality that can creep in, etc, but there are many good things about blogging as well! And one of these good things is discovering thoughtful and intelligent writers and thinkers out there whose reflections are all brought together into blog networks (I have thoroughly enjoyed being a part of the CC Blog Network, for example). Read more
Apr 22
A friend sent this to me earlier in the week, and I thought it was simply too good not to share. It’s been making the rounds in the blogosphere, but on the off-chance you haven’t seen it, here is John Cleese with the benefits of extremism. Read more
 | inquisitivelypinkcd4… on Can a Bot Long for its Ma… |
 | Ryan on Can a Bot Long for its Ma… |
| inquisitivelypinkcd4… on Can a Bot Long for its Ma… |
| inquisitivelypinkcd4… on Can a Bot Long for its Ma… |
| Ryan on Can a Bot Long for its Ma… |
Rumblings 